Red neck runaway diesel start up

Oh man this video was so funny I'm still laughing, these guys tried starting up this old 1950 clunker with a Detroit 4-71 in this GMC 650 truck, after several failed tries to keep it running after initially starting a little, using cans of spray stuff, it suddenly started up and then roared to max RPM LOL, when the kid in the picture standing next to the truck hears the thing just screaming like a banshee, he tried to cover the intake with a rag which almost got sucked in along with his hand and the picture shows the moment when he went OH S____ and ran screaming as fast as he could.
The old guy in the truck casually gets out, looks around, finds a 2x4 and lays it over the intake and things start sputtering with loads of black smoke, looks like he's seen more than a few of these happenings LOL.

I kept waiting for the engine to blow but it didn't.
Looks like this clunker saw it's best days around 1955 and it's been downhill since. It hadnt been started since 1981 and they got it for $600, I think the seller made out like a bandit on this one!

Red neck runaway diesel start up

I am famauir with this engine and I am used to repair them all the time.

Those are Detorit Diesel engine.

Now if been sitting for long time this what I always do is yank the valve cover off and get a visegrip and lock it on the fuel rack and manually move it back and forth you should able see which injector plunger rack is stuck.

Once you find stuck injectors replace or repair them before you actually start them this is the only safest way (other type of diesel engines will have diffrent prodcures on them so it will varies a bit )

Whatever you do with the screaming jimmys ( Detorits ) do not go crazy with either at all it will not take much to get them running pretty fast once you get good compression ( it will burn lube oil on the pistion dome ) so therefore that why I keep override the fuel rack bar until it clear up and hold it back on low rpm range.

Now the way the old Detorit sound they will sound like they are really reving pretty fast well ., partally true due it is a duex temp ( two stroke ) so every time the pistion do go down that is power stroke plus the screaming noise from the root blower ( it useally geared 1.5 to 2.0 X of engine speed ).

If you try to stop the suction of root blower there a chance you may blow the seal due they are very high on suction power so use something super hard materals like 2X8 or hevey gauge tin that will useally slow down the engine speed a bit until you run out of air ( after it stop there a trick to tell if the blower seal went out ) check the air box drain port to make sure they are not clogged and open up one way or other and if you do see lube oil drain out then you know the blower is pretty much done for it.

The blower seal is not super hard to replace but you will have to take it apart anyway ( keep the area super clean otherwise you will strach the blower seal pretty fast etc )

I know you may have more question to ask just feel free to holler to me I will be happy to assit you on the question.

Of course I do work on large diesel engine which I do often on larger generatour units and last week I ran a load test on big EMD diesel engine which it have 16-710 series basically it the same engine you will find in some of larger locomovite engine.